Guitar game Rocksmith announced by Ubisoft

Just as Activision's getting out of the guitar game racket, Ubisoft is entering it with Rocksmith, using real guitars as controllers.

The music game genre was recently deemed too risky by Guitar Hero and DJ Hero owner Activision, who scrapped its music games business and laid off large numbers of people at its musical studios. Ubisoft, however, is looking to get into the genre with something slightly different from the standard toy guitar game.

The developer publisher has announced Rocksmith, which will use your own real guitar as a controller, plugged into your PC, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 through an adaptor. It'll teach how to play the instrument and roughly 45 songs, which Rolling Stone reports will include the Animals, the Black Keys, David Bowie, Interpol, Nirvana and the Rolling Stones.

Songs will naturally be played with actual notes, rather than the usual colour blocks. Difficulty will scale dynamically, throwing more or fewer notes at you depending on how well you keep up. While there are scores, the song won't end abruptly if you muck it all up, simply getting easier instead. There's also a practice mode which lets players loop individual sections and adjust the speed, right down until it waits for you to play each note.

For Rocksmiths who can already play guitar, Ubisoft points out that it'll still teach you new songs.

Rocksmith is due in September, headed to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. According to The Hollywood Reporter's shadowy sources, Ubisoft is also looking to put together a $200 bundle with a real guitar.